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[Archie]

.

[esoito]

And the point you're making is....?

[Bayes]

Regarding the article, you continue to confuse determinism with probability (or human ignorance if you will) of the quantum state.

Oh well, at least I'm in good company. It seems that Einstein didn't get it either - what a dummy!


Not that I'm particularly a fan of Einstein. He's one of the reasons why modern physics has lost its way IMO. Instead of real science, it's all about coming up with the most imaginative theory, then using complex mathematics and ad-hockery to patch up the inconsistencies. Hence string theory, multiverses, black holes etc. Then you get all the woo-pedlars riding on the back of that with quantum mysticism and movies like "what the bleep do we know".

[D1]

New series of Through The Wormhole on Sky tonight
should be interesting

[Turner]

The only problem with TV science like Horizon etc is that they have 3 mins of new info and stretch it out into 1 hour with long corridor shots and massive telescope doors opening for 4 mins...interviews with scientific talking heads...and the long stare shots when introducing a new talking head. Goes on for ages.

[D1]

yes Turner you are right
but I like all that stuff lol

[Trebor]

I agree Turner.


TV science will always be just "entertainment science" but I'm a sucker for all that type of thing.


Who would watch a 3 minute programme?  On second thoughts isn't that about the modern attention span?


Trebor

[esoito]

In the absence of Archie's reply to my earlier question, let me propose the whole point of this thread...

It's for you all to find Schrödinger's cat so it can work out your bets for you.

That's the purrfect solution.

A catastrophe when it loses.

But you'll be feline good when it wins -- more money in the kitty.

[Chrisbis]

...............and gives us more 'pause' for thought then eh.
[reveal]
paws
[/reveal]
We may need more than 9 lives to survive though! lol

[Bayes]

Anyway, the argument that randomness doesn't exist, that "admits the concept by denial".

I'd like to know your definition of randomess. The only definition that makes sense is that it means lack of knowledge, or ignorance. To say that something is inherently random is meaningless (you might as well say that it did gire and gimble in the wabe - to quote Lewis Carroll), and the proposition that "it is meaningless to ascribe any properties or even existence to anything that has not been measured" is self-refuting because the proposition itself cannot be measured and is therefore meaningless on its own terms (logical positivism).


Or, you can appeal to statistics, as in the wiki entry on probability:



In a deterministic universe, based on Newtonian concepts, there would be no probability if all conditions are known (Laplace's demon), (but there are situations in which sensitivity to initial conditions exceeds our ability to measure them, i.e. know them). In the case of a roulette wheel, if the force of the hand and the period of that force are known, the number on which the ball will stop would be a certainty (though as a practical matter, this would likely be true only of a roulette wheel that had not been exactly levelled — as Thomas A. Bass' Newtonian Casino revealed). Of course, this also assumes knowledge of inertia and friction of the wheel, weight, smoothness and roundness of the ball, variations in hand speed during the turning and so forth. A probabilistic description can thus be more useful than Newtonian mechanics for analyzing the pattern of outcomes of repeated rolls of roulette wheel. Physicists face the same situation in kinetic theory of gases, where the system, while deterministic in principle, is so complex (with the number of molecules typically the order of magnitude of Avogadro constant 6.02·1023) that only statistical description of its properties is feasible.


Probability theory is required to describe quantum phenomena.[22] A revolutionary discovery of early 20th century physics was the random character of all physical processes that occur at sub-atomic scales and are governed by the laws of quantum mechanics. The objective wave function evolves deterministically but, according to the Copenhagen interpretation, it deals with probabilities of observing, the outcome being explained by a wave function collapse when an observation is made. However, the loss of determinism for the sake of instrumentalism did not meet with universal approval. Albert Einstein famously remarked in a letter to Max Born: "I am convinced that God does not play dice".[23] Like Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger, who discovered the wave function, believed quantum mechanics is a statistical approximation of an underlying deterministic reality.[24] In modern interpretations, quantum decoherence accounts for subjectively probabilistic behavior.

[Turner]

Its shrodingers birthay today

[Dane]

"Einstein disguised as Robin Hood with his memories in a trunk
passed this way an hour ago with his friend, a jealous monk"
                                 (Bob Dylan)

[TwoCatSam]

Bayes

If I read your second sentence correctly, you are saying <If you believe in random, you are uneducated>.  I'm paraphrasing, but that's the gist of it.

"In a deterministic universe, based on Newtonian concepts, there would be no probability if all conditions are known (Laplace's demon)".

How do you get past that red "if"?

Reminds me of the old saying:  IF we had some ham, we'd have some ham and eggs--IF we had some eggs.

So roulette is NOT random if you know all the variables, but you CAN'T know all the variables.  So what does that make our real, not theoretical, game of roulette?   Random!!

TwoCat

[Drazen]

So roulette is NOT random if you know all the variables, but you CAN'T know all the variables.  So what does that make our real, not theoretical, game of roulette?   Random!!

I don't know much about quantum physics but I do know what makes game real for me...

You don't need to know ALL possible variables of the game at the moment of playing ( I hardly believe that is even possible), but speaking of variables, I consider one would be more successful if he would more pay attention to some money management variables at the moment of playing...

On our luck variables in random do have some limits, so find the ones which are most suitable for you to use them and together with the ones from your MM will make game pleasantly real.[smiley]aes/rose.png[/smiley]


Best

Drazen

[Bayes]

If I read your second sentence correctly, you are saying <If you believe in random, you are uneducated>.  I'm paraphrasing, but that's the gist of it.

Sam,


No, that's not at all what I meant. I'm using "ignorance" simply to mean that you don't have knowledge of why an event occurs (nothing to do with not being educated in the wider sense, and it certainly wasn't meant to be derogatory).


So I'm saying that when you say that something is "random", this SHOULD say something about your knowledge (or lack of it), rather than the event itself. It's simply a shorthand way of admitting that you don't know. You don't know which slot the ball will land in, or whether the coin will land heads or tails up, so you say it's "random". On the other hand, some think that this is far too subjective (and it implies that "everything is relative"); they want "randomness" to be an objective thing because it's more "scientific" (but it isn't, it just seems that way until you look at it carefully).


Now you might be impatient with this and say it's just a silly argument about semantics. As you point out, if it's not possible to know all the variables then you might just as well go ahead and call it "random" for all practical purposes. It might seem like philosophical nit-picking, but it does have practical consequences in the field of statistics. There is a very long running and bitter argument between scientists and philosophers about what probability actually means (and this is closely connected to what "random" means). One view (which has been the dominant one in the 20th century, but is now starting to give way to the alternative interpretation) says that probability is just the long-run measurement of frequencies, and leads to statistical techniques which are almost impossible to understand and don't make much sense. Unfortunately this methodology has been forced on students for the last 60-80 years, which is why pretty much everyone hates the subject.

Still, the basic mathematical laws of probability are the same for both views (as mentioned in the Wiki article).